Sunday, December 18, 2016

Wa? What Wa?

Japan grew up with wa
(harmony). Conflict and competition are the creative engines of Western
civilization; Japan traveled a different route to the tumultuous present.

Wa breathes the sanctity of ancient
roots. It is enshrined in a “constitution” dating back to A.D. 604, attributed
to Prince Shotoku Taishi, who decreed: “Wa should be valued and quarrels
avoided … . When superiors are in harmony with each other and inferiors are
friendly, then affairs are discussed quietly and the right view of matters
prevails.”

This wa business was maddening to
Western political and business leaders negotiating with Japanese counterparts
back in the 1980s and early ’90s. These leaders had nothing against harmony,
but nothing against “quarrels” either. In 1983, Time magazine explained their
frustration: “Japanese companies negotiate slowly because everyone from junior
managers to major shareholders must approve a deal, in keeping with the
national tradition of consensus.”

Ah, the good old days. Nostalgia is
a sweet feeling, and veteran politician Shizuka Kamei, writing in the January
edition of monthly magazine Sapio, waxes unabashedly nostalgic, wondering what
happened to the wa that once infused Japan but, alas, no longer does.

Kamei, 80, is a politician who
defies pigeon-holing. In a public career spanning 37 years he’s been
arch-conservative and progressive, with this party and that party. He currently
sits in the Diet as an independent.

“Japan,” he writes, “got weird after
its defeat in World War II and the subsequent Occupation.”

It lost its “Japanese spirit.”

“Postwar Japanese conservatism
became simply a matter of doing what America said.”

Witness, Kamei says, the controversial
security law revisions of 2015 — a partial remilitarization of constitutionally
pacifist Japan, steamrollered through vigorous domestic opposition purely, as
he sees it, to make Japan a more useful ally to its former occupier and current
mentor.

Kamei’s own conservatism is
different. If U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is serious about withdrawing
American troops from Japan, so much the better, he feels.

“Western culture pulls people apart,
pits the strong against the weak. Japan’s draws people together.

Wa prevails.
That’s a Japanese national trait” — or was, he adds, until Americanophile
free-market fundamentalist Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001-06) set the
rich and poor at each other’s throats, with the result that today the rich get
richer and the poor poorer and more numerous. Post-“pax Americana,” Japan can
perhaps recover its lost wa and return to its cultural heritage: “At the core
of the Japanese soul is the spirit of mutual aid, everyone helping each other
as the way to happiness.”

Nostalgia is the rose-colored
spectacles through which we view the past. It was always better then,
the further back in time the rosier. The weekly Josei Seven notes a recent wave
of 1980s nostalgia.

It wasn’t wa, exactly, but the
economic bubble then swelling — not to burst until the early ’90s — that spread
its buoyancy far and wide: 90 percent of the population regarded themselves as
comfortably middle class. Discos throbbed, restaurants and bars were packed. An
advertising executive who joined her company in 1989 recalls dining on an
unlimited company expense account: “There’d be five of us but we’d order for
15.” Why? Why not? Five could eat enough for 10, and if five portions went
uneaten, who cared?

You had to be there. For those born
too late, the bubble is as incomprehensible as wa. The pinched, parched present
offers no equivalent — in Japan or in the world at large.

Sapio’s cover package, of which
Kamei’s piece is part, is titled, “The worldwide enthusiasm for dictators,”
subtitled, “Japan is surrounded by despots.”

A breed universally vilified only
yesterday is today ascendant. Some hold power by force, others — despotic, if
not literally despots — by the electorally expressed will of the people. Where
not in power today, they can reasonably hope to be tomorrow. It’s their
nationalism that appeals. Globalism, once the cure for nationalism, has become
a disease, and nationalism the cure. Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin,
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Europe’s rising right-wing leaders are
admired for excesses of speech and action that not long ago would have been
branded reactionary, if not abuses of power. But sagging economies, affronted
national pride and deepening insecurity alter judgment.

The prognosis for wa is bleak. In
October the weekly Shukan Gendai declared, “Tokyo people hate Kanagawa
Prefecture.” The feeling seems mutual. To such an extent do the nearest of
neighbors inspire disgust in each other.

To Tokyoites, Kanagawa’s pride in
its California-like beaches and its supposed cultural sophistication — as the
first part of Japan to be settled by Westerners in the 1860s it retains to this
day a cosmopolitan receptiveness to the outside world — is grating, if not
ridiculous. Kanagawa returns the compliment: Tokyo is not a city, just a vast
collection of villages where village parochialism predominates.

It’s a silly quarrel, but if such
near neighbors can despise each other, who can get along? Are the walls,
barriers and fenced borders propounded by the “despots” inevitable?

An ongoing controversy in Japan pits
people in quiet residential neighborhoods against day-care developers. It’s no
use telling these residents that women nowadays work and will forego having
children unless day-care facilities are available. They know that, know the
disastrous and already apparent demographic consequences, and acknowledge the
need that the developers are scrambling to meet. It’s all fine with them — on
one condition: “Not in my neighborhood.” In whose, then? By the same token,
people in rich countries at peace understand the needs of refugees fleeing poor
countries at war — if only they would flee somewhere else.

Earlier this month a Thai teenager
born and raised in Japan was ordered to be deported. His parents had been
living here illegally. It wasn’t his fault, but the Tokyo High Court ruling
will expel him from the only country he knows as home. It seems a despicably
mean-spirited application of the law — but much in keeping with the times.

Michael Hoffman is the author of “In
the Land of the Kami: A Journey into the Hearts of Japan” and “Other Worlds.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I really felt sad upon reading
this.It isn’t just Japan that would be
better for more attention to wa.My own
country would be greatly improved by striving for wa instead chasing the
almighty dollar, and selfish striving to be “the best” or “the newest” or “the
most important.”All that we have done
is to create a people that is disinclined to think of their neighbors – many don’t
even know their neighbors’ names – or
are so paranoid and negative that they lapse into depression or live in a
constant state of anxiety.It’s how we
ended up with Drumpf as president, and what that will bring will surely be a
step backward in human evolution.“The
pursuit of happiness” has become a joke.Most Americans equate happiness with the latest social media gadget and
a “better” car than their neighbors.Try
telling someone that personal happiness is obtained by doing what is right and
thinking of others and you will quickly be tuned out.Try being a living example of this, and you
will soon be labeled a nutball – or at least a goodie two-shoes.

1 comment:

Yeah, our major export is anti-civilization, and an addiction to short-term planning and the quick fix. I think our Great Experiment has turned into a rousing failure, and I think we coulda done lots better. Man, aren't we a cheery lot!

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This is a blog about what interests me. Here you will find stories on animals, including animal rights material, cute stuff, and random informative posts about weird, beautiful and interesting creatures. Horses, Spotted Hyenas, and Border Collies will make regular appearances.
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